In many of the 2013 year-in-review stories, the line on Danica Patrick will be she made history in the opening race of the year with a pole and an eighth-place finish in the Daytona 500 followed by a quite forgettable season.

Dismissing Patrick as a lost cause might be tempting, but it wouldn’t be the right thing to do just yet. She can get better as a NASCAR driver (cue the joke of 'how can she get much worse?').

In all seriousness, she should get more than a year to prove herself. And she has shown glimpses of potential.

With 2013 just her second full year of stock-car racing—Patrick's first was a 10th-place finish in the Nationwide Series in 2012—her stock-car resume didn’t exactly project a strong rookie Cup season.

The Sprint Cup cars have more horsepower and, according to most Cup drivers, are more difficult to race than Nationwide cars. They also require a driver to give detailed feedback to get the car better throughout race weekend.

So it’s no wonder that 2013 proved to be a struggle for Patrick, who finished 27th in the Cup standings.

Patrick didn’t seem to be able to carry over the feel of the car she needed on return trips to tracks, showing she was still trying to get a handle on the car.

It is possible that developments in the new Gen-6 car—which Sprint Cup teams used for the first time in 2013—were so advanced between trips to tracks that what worked for Patrick the first time at a racetrack wasn't good enough when she returned. Combined with her overall lack of experience in a stock car, Patrick could have had more difficulty than her competition in adapting to the rapid pace of development of the new car.

So what does Patrick need to do to perform better? From the outside looking in, there are a few things she must accomplish in 2014 to make it appear that this project could eventually have some benefits.

She needs to qualify better. That doesn’t just mean she has found more speed in her racing line and the setup, it also helps her confidence on a race weekend.

In 2013, she averaged a starting spot of 30th and had 19 races where she started worse than 30th. That couldn’t have helped her mentally and added to the frustration for Patrick and her crew.

It also put her in danger of getting lapped quickly. Once a driver gets lapped, the complexion of the race changes into one of catch-up. Where is the free pass position? What type of pit strategy can be done to get back on the lead lap? In other words, the race dictates what the driver does and not the driver.

How does she find speed? By getting somewhat comfortable. The key word in the previous sentence: somewhat.

Cup cars aren’t designed to race comfortable. They are designed to race on the ragged edge, and it’s up to the driver to be able to push the car to that edge without going over the line.

She might crash in practice more—and that appears to hurt her mentally than anything else—but she needs to find that line of where the car is at its peak.

Patrick also must take advantage of what she has on the restrictor-plate tracks. After holding her line in the season-opening Daytona 500, she has appeared more antsy at restrictor-plate races, trying to make a move and coming up empty. She will need to learn from those experiences, looking closely at whether she was making a move just to make a move or whether she actually had good reason to make the move and just didn’t pull it off.

So why in the world should anyone think Patrick has potential? Although she qualified poorly, she improved on her starting position in 23 of the 36 races. In 10 of those, she improved more than 10 spots, meaning that her improvement wasn’t just the basis of attrition.

Granted, part of that improvement was because she qualified poorly—in six races, she started 40th or worse among the 43 cars—but at least it is a sign that her team makes some gains during a race weekend.

She also wrecked out of five races. It would be expected that she would have fewer of those days in the future. She needs to have fewer of those days in the future.

The one thing most likely is Patrick, if she improves, will move with baby steps, and she can’t expect things to just magically turnaround and make her a Chase contender. Paul Menard was 34th and 26th in his first two seasons and has turned himself into a top-20 driver who has flirted with the Chase.

Patrick isn’t there yet. She probably won’t be there next year. But she has a chance to improve and must be content with small gains. She doesn’t appear to be a lost cause even though it’s easy to dismiss her as just a pretty face whose sponsorship is much deeper than her talent.